


Teach Me to Run From Myself

by allfireburns



Series: And If I Miss You, And If We Falter [5]
Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Gen, Introspection, POV Third Person, community: justprompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 21:02:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allfireburns/pseuds/allfireburns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor can run as far as he wants, but she's still going to follow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teach Me to Run From Myself

If anyone asked, he could say the TARDIS just did this sometimes. He meant to arrive in Cardiff, 2009, on the Plass above the Hub, and instead... it materialized somewhere else altogether. It wasn't as if Martha or Jack could disagree with that, and a TARDIS wasn't meant to be piloted by one person anyway...

As he set the coordinates, he half-imagined he saw her out of the corner of his eye. He didn't turn to look, because she'd be gone, it would ruin the illusion. But he could imagine the look on her face right now, grinning at him, eyes bright and eager. Or... no. She'd know what he was doing, just now, she'd be giving him a look all reproving and concerned and a little annoyed.

Of course, if she were here she wouldn't have reason to, because there would be nothing to run away from.

He wound up on a planet he didn't know the name of, in the middle of some sort of war, and couldn't help but smile bitterly to himself thinking about how Donna would accuse him of _looking_ for trouble. He met a girl - purple skin, nice smile, who told him she hadn't wanted to go to war in the first place - and offered her a ride because _she_ would have told him to save someone.

He travelled to Stillwater, a tourist planet all covered in ice. Donna would have complained at the lack of a beach - all these ice planets and not one beach - but she'd have stopped when he pointed out the never-ending light show in the sky above. He didn't stay for more than an hour - nothing for him to do on planets like this when he had no one to share it with.

He wandered to Manhattan in the 1980s, tracked down a memnovore preying on the inhabitants of the East Village. She'd have insisted on dressing appropriately for the time period, any excuse to raid the wardrobe. Maybe she'd have even done her hair to fit, if she were here for it, and the image almost made him smile.

At Osiris and Elessi and Poosh, she was there, in the corner of his eye and the corner of his mind, and by the time he made it back to Cardiff, he couldn't remember if it was by accident or design. They had her frozen, downstairs, and Martha led him quietly down to see her, hung back with a worried frown while he stood in front of the cryogenic containment unit they were keeping Donna in. It wasn't forever, he told himself. Just until he found a way to save her, and he would, of course he would, he was _brilliant_...

But it was pointless making promises to someone who couldn't hear him, who wasn't even alive at the moment, by most definitions of the word. "I wish you were here," he said quietly instead, and for once couldn't think what her response would be.


End file.
